Begin by telling
them, “The fat you eat is the fat you wear,” and
remind them that there is nothing attractive
about wearing olive, flaxseed, or corn fat.*
For this reason alone, most of your friends and
family should steer clear of so-called “healthy
oils” derived from plant-foods. Gaining weight
can be expected from consuming high-fat whole
foods, such as nuts, seeds, avocados and olives,
as well as “free oils,” which are usually
purchased in bottles. However, the shared
propensity for weight gain is where the
similarity between unprocessed plant foods and
free oils ends.

I consider whole
foods, even those with high concentrations of
fats, to be health-promoting. However, people
interested in losing weight should avoid nuts,
nut butters, seeds, seed spreads, avocados, and
olives, since they all serve as sources of
concentrated, easy to consume, calories. When I
was growing up we had nuts in their shells as a
special treat for Christmas. Now these same
nuts come bare-naked, salted, and sometimes
roasted in additional oils—and the twist of the
lid of the jar brings effortlessly to your lips
(and your hips) handfuls of fat-laden,
calorie-concentrated rich food. These same
foods, however, may be a welcome addition for
growing children and active adults. But they
should be used sparingly by most of us.

Chemically
speaking, free oils are chains of carbon found
in a purified state. Extraction processes have
removed all of the other ingredients of the
whole food. Thus, free oils are no longer
intermixed with the naturally-designed and
balanced environment of proteins, carbohydrates,
vitamins, minerals, and ten thousand other
chemicals found originally in the plants.
Free-oils are not food—at best these are
medications, causing some desirable effects, and
at worst; they are serious toxins causing
disease.

*The main
distinction between fats and oils is whether
they’re solid or liquid at room temperature.

Oils Are
Essential for Health

The human body can
synthesize from raw materials almost all of the
organic compounds needed to build and maintain
itself. However, there are a few basic elements
that it cannot synthesize. These must be
obtained from the food, and include 11 vitamins,
8 amino acids, and 2 kinds of fat.
Fortunately, except for two vitamins (vitamin D
from the sun and B12 from bacteria), all of
these essential nutrients are made by plants and
found in abundant quantities in a diet based on
whole starches, vegetables, and fruits.

Fats are made of
chains of carbon which differ in length, and the
number and positions of double bonds (a chemical
term for a dual linkage between carbon atoms).
Animals cannot create double bonds after the
third and sixth carbon on the chain. Only
plants can make this arrangement. The result is
that only plants can synthesize omega-3 and
omega-6 fats. These are referred to as
“essential fats.” We, like all other animals,
must get these essential fats directly by eating
plants or indirectly by eating animals that ate
plants and stored these essential fats in their
tissues. For example, fish store the omega-3
fats made by algae—fish cannot synthesize this
kind of fat.

Common Fats (fatty acids)

Linoleicacid is from plants and is the
most common kind of omega-6 fat consumed
by people.

Gamma
linolenicacid is an omega-6 fat from
plants, and in an isolated form, is used
as a medication.

Alphalinolenicacid is from
plants and is the most common omega-3
fat consumed.

Eicosapentaenoic acid
(EPA) is an omega-3 fat made by animals,
including fish, from alpha linolenic
acid.

Docosahexaenoic acid
(DHA)
is an omega-3 fat made by animals,
including fish, from alpha linolenic
acid.

Linoleic

Alpha
linolenic

Gama
linolenic

Eicosapentaenoic

safflower

flax

borage

cold water
marine fish

sunflower

hemp

black
currant seed

hemp seed

canola
(rapeseed)

primrose

soybeans

soybeans

walnut

walnut

pumpkin

leafy
green vegetables

sesame

purslane

flax

perilla

Essential Fat
Deficiency Is Essentially Unknown

In our bodies
these plant-derived, essential fats are used for
many purposes including the formation
of all cellular
membranes, and the synthesis of
powerful hormones,
known as eicosanoids (prostaglandins,
leukotrienes, and thromboxanes). Our
requirement is very tiny, and even the
most basic diets provide sufficient linoleic
acid to meet our requirement, which is estimated
to be 1–2% of dietary energy.1Therefore, in
practical terms, a condition of “essential fatty
acid deficiency” is essentially unknown in
free-living populations.*

Essential fatty acid
deficiency is seen when sick patients are fed
intravenously by fat-free parenteral nutrition.
In these cases, correction of the deficiency can
be accomplished by applying small amounts of
soybean or safflower oil to their skin—giving
you some idea of the small amount of oil we
require.2 Plan on your diet of basic
plant-foods supplying an abundance of essential
fats delivered in perfectly designed packages,
functioning efficiently and safely.

*Some people talk
about a “relative deficiency” of essential fats
created by a large intake of saturated animal
fats, synthetic trans fats (as found in
margarine and shortenings), and/or omega-6 fats
compared to their intake of omega-3 fats, and
they believe many of our common chronic diseases
are the result of this imbalance.1
This is quite different from true essential
fatty acid deficiency which would result in:
loss of hair, scaly dermatitis, capillary
fragility, poor wound healing, increased
susceptibility to infection, fatty liver, and
growth retardation in infants and children.1

Free Oils as
Medications

When the oils are
removed from their natural environments—for
example, from the seeds of corn, soybeans,
safflowers, or flax, or the fruit of an olive or
avocado—they are no longer a food. Yes, they do
supply concentrated calories—but the rest of the
original nutrition found in the plant parts is
absent. In this state, the free oils can
display powerful pharmacological effects—some
beneficial and some harmful. This would be
analogous to removing vitamins and minerals from
plants and making supplements. I don’t call
supplements food, do you? However, the effects
of concentrated, isolated oils are usually even
more potent than those seen with supplements.

Omega-3 and
omega-6 oils inhibit the aggregation of
platelets, slowing down the coagulation of the
blood—thus these oils “thin the blood.” This
well-known property can be beneficial for
reducing the risk of a blood clot forming in the
heart arteries—the cause of a heart attack. A
common practice is to take omega-3 (fish or
flaxseed) pills to reduce the risk of heart
disease.3

Omega-3 and
omega-6 oils suppress the immune system,
reducing inflammation. As medications they have
been tried in autoimmune conditions such as
rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease,
ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, lupus
erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, eczema, and
psoriasis.4 Other disorders, such as
migraine headaches, Alzheimer’s disease, and PMS
have also been treated. The reports of benefits
are variable and often questionable; as a
result, their use has not been well accepted in
most medical practices.

As silly as this
may sound, it has been suggested that eating
essential fat may cause people to lose weight.
However, a 12-week, double-blind evaluation of
evening primrose oil as an “anti-obesity agent”
on 100 women found no significant difference in
the weight loss achieved by those taking
primrose oil compared with placebo.5
Fats (and oils) are the metabolic dollar stored
for the day when food is no longer available.
Even “healthy oils” are moved from the spoon to
the flesh with such efficiency that you should
assume every drop you eat makes that journey.

Free Oils as
Toxins

As with all other
medications, there are adverse effects from
consuming free oils, when added from a bottle to
meals or taken as pills. The most obvious
adverse effect is people gain weight when they
eat even so-called “healthy oils,” like olive
oil. When 54 obese
women in a Mediterranean country were studied,
these women were found to be following a diet
low in carbohydrates (35% of the calories) and
high in fats (43% of the calories). Of the
total calories from fat, 55% came from olive
oil.6 My point: a Mediterranean
diet which is loaded with olive oil, rather than
fruits and vegetables, will make you fat.

Omega-3 and
omega-6 oils thin the blood, which make a person
more susceptible to bleeding.7,8
This side effect from taking essential oils to
prevent a heart attack could become fatal after
an automobile accident or if an artery in the
brain were to rupture, such as occurs in a
hemorrhagic stroke.

Do Vegetable Oils Really Prevent Heart
Disease?

Common
knowledge is vegetable oils are
protective against heart disease, but
there is evidence that questions the
real life benefits:

Serial
angiograms of people’s heart
arteries show that all three types
of fat—saturated (animal) fat,
monounsaturated (olive oil), and
polyunsaturated (omega-3 and -6
oils)—were associated with
significant increases in new
atherosclerotic lesions over one
year of study.9
Only by decreasing the entire fat
intake, including poly- and
monounsaturated-oils, did the lesions
stop growing.

Dietary polyunsaturated oils,
both the omega-3 and omega-6 types,
are incorporated into human
atherosclerotic plaques; thereby
promoting damage to the arteries and
the progression of atherosclerosis.10

A
study in African
green
monkeys found when saturated fat was
replaced with monounsaturated fat
(olive oil), the olive oil provided
no protection from atherosclerosis.11

One
of the
most important clotting factors
predicting the risk of a heart
attack is an elevated factor VII.
All five fats tested—rapeseed oil
(canola), olive oil, sunflower oil,
palm oil, and butter—showed similar
increases in triglycerides and
clotting factor VII.12

Most
likely, the heart benefits of a
Mediterranean diet are due to it being a
nearly vegetarian diet. The
Mediterranean diet is a good diet in
spite of the olive oil.13

Free oils may be
toxic to the body tissues. Both omega-3 and
omega-6 fats are associated with an increased
risk of opacification of the lens of the eye,
resulting in cataracts.14

Omega-3 and
omega-6 oils could benefit people with
autoimmune disorders. On the other hand,
excessive intake of these fats may actually
aggravate these disorders.15 More
importantly, we need our immune system
functioning at full capacity to fight off
infections and cancer. Free oils have been
demonstrated to suppress many natural microbe
killing mechanisms (with a marked decrease in
cytokine, tumour necrosis factor-alpha and
interferon-gamma).16

Research on
animals suggests the omega-6 variety of oils is
very cancer-promoting and the omega-3 variety
may be beneficial for cancer prevention.17
However, this may not be the case. In one
animal experiment on colon cancer, a fish oil
diet and a safflower oil diet induced,
respectively, 10- and 4-fold more metastases
(number) and over 1000- and 500-fold more
metastases (size) than were found in the livers
of rats on the low-fat diet.18
Other, animal experiments also have shown
essential fats to be cancer promoting.19,20
Most importantly, population studies tell us
that, worldwide, the lower the total fat intake,
the less the risk of common cancers, such as
breast, colon and prostate.21-23

Not a day goes by
that I don’t hear someone say to me, “My diet is
completely vegan, but I am still 40 pounds
overweight.” The oily sheen on her face and hair
are a clear give away that she hasn’t been
willing to stop adding the half cup of extra
virgin olive oil to her spaghetti sauce. Many
people fall short of their health and appearance
goals because they have yet to eliminate all the
added vegetable oils from their cooking. Eating
out is a major stumbling block. More often than
not, even after using the best communication
skills with the waiter, the diner plate still
glistens with an oil slick. Avoiding free
vegetable oils is the last important hurdle for
people seeking better health. Take the final
step—just say “No” to these really unessential
added oils.